Month: January 2015

A fictional film! AT LAST. After a slate of screenings of, and trailers for, “true stories” at last we come to a completely original, FICTIONAL story. The curse is ended, and originality prevails! Rather than a historical, emotional roller-coaster, we now have a surreal tale of an aging Hollywood actor trying to throw off the shackles of his blockbuster days by pursuing his more artistic desires that also doubles as a clever parallel of the lead actor’s real life career-

And so, the “based on a true story” trend continues. I don’t have a problem with this trend as such as there are plenty of amazing stories to be told from history. But when every film, every trailer and every poster use the phrase “true story” as its main selling point, then the phrase begins to lose meaning.

Sitting in the cinema the other day, escaping from the sweltering Melbourne summer heat, I had a realisation: there are a lot of movies coming out that are based on/inspired by true events. I mean A LOT. Not only was I sitting down the watch The Imitation Game (a true story), but earlier in the day I saw The Water Diviner (“inspired” by a true story), along with trailers for Unbroken, Selma and In the Heart of the Sea, all dramatisations of true stories. Does this feed into the calamity of Hollywood making nothing but remakes and reboots? Possibly, as they all run the risk of being stories that we would already know. But we still occasionally get completely fictitious gems like Interstellar, so I wouldn’t be too concerned.

Here we are: a new year, a new Hobbit to review. And this one is allegedly the BIG one. “The defining chapter” as the poster states, even though I would have thought the defining chapter of a story about a bunch of Dwarves trying to reclaim their home from a dragon would be when they actually confront the dragon. But then again, what would I know! As I mentioned when writing about Desolation of Smaug, there was not much story left to tell from The Hobbit novel so I did not know what would be contained within Armies. Well, now I do know and there was somehow two and a half hours of it!